We eventually arrived at the Stele of the Fourth Creation about seven hours later, or so Arx’s respawn timer informed me. It was quite difficult to tell, otherwise. There was no moon out that evening, so once the sun finally set, we were forced to walk with nothing but the stars to guide us.

Well, that and the occasional burst of help from Unclothe the Darkness, my handy little visual-aid spell. The highlights it provided were not the best when it came to things like depth perception unless I paired it with its base spell—and there was no way I was going to spring for that over a multi-hour hike—so making sense of the topography around us had been a mite sketchy. However, we had at least been able to tell where the little dirt track we were following led, and that was good enough.

Thankfully, we had not run into any trouble along the way. I had no idea whether it was related to the unfortunate events at the town formerly known as Raialie, but the entire way it felt as if the world was holding its breath. I heard neither insects nor birds. No small animals scurried through the grasses. It was like they had all collectively decided that tonight everyone was better off just staying in.

I was of a mind to agree with them.

And so was Jax, for that matter. Something was clearly bothering her. And not just the Lust Ailment she was still stubbornly holding onto. She might have claimed she was only storing it so as to feed me later, but I had a feeling there was more to it than that. I could understand.

To be honest, it was not such a bad idea. Where many would have drowned their sorrows in the bottom of a mug, she was doing it with Lust. What better way to take your mind off the destruction we had witnessed? If I could have functioned under that kind of influence, I might have been tempted to join her.

Once we got to the Stele, it was still the dead of night. The pillar was little more than a black bar of nothing stabbing up from its hill into the field of stars before us. It was imposing in its own way. Very Stanley Kubrick inspired.

The two of us stood side-by-side, looking up at it for a short while. However, as we could not approach any closer in the darkness without fear of misstep, I quickly refreshed Unclothe the Darkness so that we could get a better look.

The highlights revealed what appeared to be the remains of an archaeological survey site. Wooden stakes had been pounded into the ground all over the place with strings connecting them in a rough grid. Quite a few of them were toppled over though, and most of the strings had been severed or come loose over the months of neglect. So it was difficult to tell the intent of the surveyors.

However, right in the middle of the path leading up to the Stele, there was a large wooden board attached to a pair of rounded stakes. It might have been a sign, but it was impossible to tell in the dark. My highlights only revealed the edges of a thing, so if it was a sign, there would be no way for us to know what it said.

Curious, Jax ran her hands over the thing before slowly and tantalizingly bending at the waist to sniff along its surface. “Mmm~ I smell old paint,” she moaned plaintively.

I had to give my head a bit of a shake. It was more than a little disorienting to try to parse such a mundane topic of discussion with the very clear subtext behind her words. The disparity of it was almost comical.

It took some effort, but I did manage to finally tear my eyes away from her gyrating hips. “Yes… well. Knowing a bunch of scholars, it probably says something about the history of the place and warns us against disturbing their work.” I had been to my share of national parks in my day, and this was giving me a very similar vibe.

“Maybe,” she agreed before straightening once more. Although, from the way her back arched on the way up, ‘straightening’ was about the last thing on her mind. “If ye’s curious, I could take up some of these big… thick… hn~ stakes.” She had to pause for a moment to settle herself before starting again. “They’d burn easy. Then, ye could read whatever them book-men thought were so important.”

I chuckled despite myself. The absurdity of the situation combined with how sexy she looked doing it was starting to get to me. But I decided to let things play out for a while longer. What can I say? It was entertaining!

“Honestly,” I began, trying to control my inane giggling, “knowing ‘book-men,’ they would probably be more upset that we disturbed their site-markers.” Then, I jerked my head toward the Stele, and said, “Come on. Let’s take a closer look up the hill. And be careful not to trip over anything.”

She absently chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before nodding. Honestly, even in the condition she was in, if either of us was going to trip, it would be me. I was far less agile than she was.

We quickly discovered that the path did not lead straight up the hill, and the reason for that became obvious once we got close. The Stele—and the hill it was sitting on—was much larger than we had initially thought. From our vantage down at the the survey-site, the thing had looked no more than thirty feet tall or so, but as we began wending our way up the switchbacks leading to its base, it was clear that the Stele was easily ten times that.

Once we crested the final rise, we had to pause for a moment to admire the sheer majesty of the monument. Even with my highlights, it was nearly impossible to see up to the tip from where we were. Meanwhile, the base of it was easily wide enough that it would have required Jax, Arx, and me to join hands in order to even stretch ourselves along one side of it.

As far as shape, the Stele seemed to taper toward the top, but that might have only been an illusion owing to how tall it was. However, the base of it was arranged into five even, interconnecting planes, so I assumed that it would look like a pentagon if one were to look at it from above.

Meanwhile, the Words that were supposedly carved into it were only just visible at this distance with my highlights. They were a bit disorienting to look at. As a whole, it was a clear and obvious logographic writing system—each Word had its own unique symbol. However, when I tried to focus on any specific symbol, it would blur, making it impossible to describe, sketch, or reproduce in any way. It was no wonder the scholars working here had been having so much trouble.

The only exceptions to this were the few Words that had entered into my vocabulary. Of those, I could see Generation cropping up a few times, and I was pretty sure Conceal was written somewhere near the top. None of my other Words appeared, but that was not particularly surprising. I had to figure that whatever entity had carved this thing would not have had much use for Words like Dirt… or Labia. Or Toilet.

Unfortunately, that was all I could see from our current vantage. Someone had gone through the effort of erecting a tall fence around the whole thing.

“How cruel,” Jax murmured. “To cage up a mighty… hmm~ banger such as that?”

Under normal circumstances, I would have been a little confused as to what she had meant by ‘banger,’ but given the context and the very overt way she had said it, it was pretty easy to guess. Then again, I had to imagine it would be difficult to make a stele that could avoid looking phallic.

“Oh… you know how it is,” I replied easily—at least at first. “You’ve got to keep people from c-climbing on it.” I do not know how I managed to finish that sentence.

“But it be a holy site,” she protested, having missed the innuendo. Somehow. She was still staring up at the huge, black spire. “Who’d do such as that?”

I shrugged, though my shoulders were shaking. “Well… I guess some people just have to… have to kneel at the altar.”

It took her a moment, but she did finally realize what I was going for. Probably because of the wheezing.

“Master!” she squealed, simultaneously scandalized yet undoubtedly titillated by my implication. Still, she could not help but to laugh along with me. For a few seconds we giggled like a couple of idiots at my stupid joke, but eventually she bumped her hip into my side. “Boil me, but ye should nay talk such here, Master. I feel eyes on me. Like the Three be near to this place.”

I could only smirk at that little pronouncement. It was like being admonished not to swear by Richard Pryor in a completely empty church. Well, whatever… I had gotten a laugh out of her, and that was all the permission I needed. It also encouraged me to mess with her, even though it probably was not the best idea.

“Hey…” I murmured quietly into her ear as I wrapped an arm around her waist, “since they’re watching… maybe you wanna do a little… worshiping of our own?”

She gasped instantly and her eyes jerked up to mine.

“Master?!” she hissed, far more scandalized now. But also incredibly tempted.

I knew how keyed up she had been, so this was hardly fair. Then again, she had been at me all night, so I did not feel too bad. For several long seconds, she simply looked up at me, her eyes steadily draining of fear while they filled with longing. She trembled in my arms and chewed at her bottom lip as she struggled not to simply launch herself at me. However, seeing her like that—at the very edge of her self-control—quickly caused my manhood to rise to the occasion.

And if she had been keyed up before, she practically lost her mind after that.

A low and powerfully inhuman moan crawled its way out of her throat a split second before her legs wrapped around my waist. I barely even staggered under her weight, and as quickly as her hot and needy lips found mine, I had no time to consider how strange that was. Nor much of anything else.

My own lust began to surge unnaturally within me, almost like a stormfront breaking against the rocks alongside a lighthouse. I had little doubt that she was using her skills to their fullest effect, but I quickly decided that I did not much care. She wanted me so much, I decided that at least for a little while I would let myself be carried away by her.

Plus, it had been my own idea. I could hardly start complaining now…

“Yes~” she moaned through her teeth, and began fumbling with the various strings holding my clothes together. “Take me… I want ye in me. Now!”

I did not bother to reply. I simply yanked my kilt and her skirt out of the way. Our wardrobe might not have been the fanciest, but there were certain advantages.

For an instant, my throbbing manhood slapped against her ever-moist and ready slit, and then it was sucked inside. I had to gasp as I was enveloped by the intense heat and powerful waves of her delight, and when she began to grind herself against me, my head began to spin with it. I was quickly being overwhelmed.

“Yes…” she moaned again. “Feel! Feel me, my master! Join with me!”

“Uh…” I managed to grunt. I had thought we already were joined. However, she was milking my cock with such desperate abandon that my orgasm was already fast approaching, so I did not manage to say much of anything else. I barely even had a moment of coherent thought before I began to empty myself within her.

She threw her head back and cried her pleasure to the stars while I seized. For several long seconds, she simply held me to herself while she accepted everything I had to give. All the while, I felt as if my seed was being greedily sucked away by her molten folds. They were alive in a way that no human woman’s could be. Hers was not an organ for passively accepting a man’s love. It was for taking it.

And it never stopped it’s pull.

After a while, I began to come down once more—but she was not done with me yet. She kissed me lovingly while I recovered, soft mewls of delight escaping her tongue all the while. And then, in that moment of quiet, our eyes met. Starlight and powerful emotion glimmered along the reflective surface of her irises like twin oases set into the dunes of some far-off desert. And then our Cores reached for one another.

It was not a conscious act. It never was. I had no idea how we did it, nor could I reliably replicate it. But sometimes, in these moments, we could somehow… feel one another. Be one another. Pass through the valley of our joined souls, and there, intermingle.

For an instant, the ever-thrumming howl of her longing passed over me, and like coming to the eye of a hurricane, there was a moment of sudden peace. We simply floated within each other’s eyes in a trance—her legs still wrapped firmly around me and me still embedded within her folds. I could scarcely describe the experience—to be so enmeshed within someone else’s psyche.

But I was loved. It was an absolute and certain knowledge. Slowly, a tear began to leak down the corner of my eye from the beauty of it. Or it could have been hers. In that instant, there was little difference.

Then it was over, and a slight cry of anguish escaped her lips. But we could not control those brief little interludes. There was no bringing it back. Not purposefully.

Abruptly, her full weight reasserted itself, and I grunted in surprise. My knees were already wobbly from my recent orgasm, so in my attempt to correct my balance, we ended up careening to one side… and we crashed straight through the shoddily-constructed boards of the fence.

I do not know how Jax managed to catch us before we landed in a heap, but she did. At some point during the fall, she twisted and her feet slammed into the dirt—except I was still wedged firmly between her thighs… and her lady-bits. It was probably the most awkward position I had ever been in. There I was, my back almost painfully arched over her heels while she continued to mount me like some rodeo stallion.

At first I was too stunned to say much of anything. The disparity of events from that beautiful commingling of souls to this was jarring to say the least. Plus, what could I have said? I was hardly prepared for a situation like that, so witty banter was about the last thing on my mind—and not just because of all the blood rushing to my head.

However, Jax was not so impaired. With a throaty chuckle, she whispered, “Be careful, Master… lest ye trip.”

For a moment, I was a little sour at having my own words so… appropriately thrown in my face. But then she leaned down to kiss me again, and I quickly forgot about it. I could plainly feel my center rocking back and forth while Jax’s hips continued to grind and undulate around me in waves. Plus, despite how recently I had emptied myself, I could already feel my libido rising, so I had little doubt that she was intentionally nurturing it back to life.

Altogether, even in my upended state I was feeling bizarrely… delightful?

With an effort, I managed to look up at her. It was pretty easy to guess—what with her head thrown back, her heaving chest, and her cries of exultation—the direction of her thoughts. Other than sex, it was hard to imagine there was room for much else. Slowly, her hands began to rove about her body, tangling through her hair, running along her horns, and groping at her breasts—though, a growl of frustration rumbled its way out of her throat when she met the cloth there.

“Mmmore~”

With an effortless flick of her wrist, her claws snapped through the twine holding her tunic in place, and it fell loose. Hastily, she tore it over her head and tossed the garment aside like unwanted chaff. Her bosom, now freed from its imprisonment, graced the starlight with its outline, and her moans redoubled in her relief.

Almost laughing now, she gathered me into her arms and pulled me up. I do not think she even really noticed how uncomfortable I was in this position. She was too enraptured by the continued joining of our flesh. Of course, once she buried my face between her lovely mounds, I soon discarded my complaints. Boobs are good for that sort of thing.

“Yes! Feel me, Master,” she panted. “Feel me flesh as yer own. Yer pleasure tastes divine! Taste me. Taste me as I do ye!”

That was nonsense, of course. I could never ‘taste’ her emotions even if I wanted to. Still, I had a rather lovely pair of breasts in my face, so I could do the next best thing. And I decided that I could do a little better than just ‘taste’ them.

With a smug little grin, I switched on The Hammer of Glory, but since its upgrade, I was now able to direct its effects to places other than just my dick. I paused for a few heartbeats, simply taking in the scent of her skin while I focused my will to my tongue. And once I felt it had built long enough, I stretched forward and gave the little nub at the tip of her breast a gentle flick.

Her startled yelp of pleasure was music to my ears.

“Ahn~ Mercy’s fuckin’ hands!” she shouted, her voice breaking from the intensity of the moment. Her arms quickly encircled my head, and she squeezed my tightly to her chest. “Again! Please, Master. Again! Don’t stop. Never stop!”

Obligingly, I sucked her nipple into my mouth and pulled it gently between my teeth as I flicked it over and over with my tongue. Her entire body jerked each time I made contact as if from a live wire. Her cries of pleasure rang higher and higher, building to her own inevitable climax.

Abruptly, her thighs clamped hard against my hips, and she began to twist and writhe around me. I was still extremely sensitive from my own recent eruption, and the undulations I was experiencing were almost too much for me. Plus, my left butt-cheek was starting to cramp from Jax’s heel pressing into it. So I decided it was high time to reposition myself.

Of course, Jax was still mid-orgasm and clinging to me like a koala on a eucalyptus tree, so I could not have picked a worse time for it. However, cramps are not things that a person can just ignore. So with some effort, I got my legs back under me and staggered to my feet all while hopping around and punching my own butt.

“Yes!” Jax cried while I stumbled around, her body undulating against my own. “Master, yes! I be melting! More! Whatever yer doing… more!”

“Yeah… great… uh…” I managed just before I overbalanced and began to careen to one side.

In a moment of desperation, I decided to try and guide us toward the Stele, figuring that I could at least use it to leverage against. It would be a bit of a hard landing, but at least then, I could try to work out that damned cramp. Jax’s back and my hand met the great obelisk at the exact same instant.

Abruptly, there was a flash of light…

Jax screamed…

And my world went dark.

*****

I blinked.

And then I blinked again as my eyes struggled to adjust to the well-lit room I seemed to have appeared within. My head quickly swiveled about, trying to make sense of my new surroundings. The shift was so disorienting that it took me several seconds before I could really understand what I was looking at.

I was standing in the middle of a modern… earth-like… living room? But… how?

The walls were papered with a cheap-looking yet pleasant pattern depicting wildlife and jungle scenes. It was the sort of thing that you might find in an old gentleman’s club. The kind where men went to smoke cigars and drink whiskey and escape from their wives. Not the other kind. Meanwhile, the ceiling was the popcorn acoustic affair so emblematic of residential homes some years ago, and the flooring was made up of well-polished, if slightly warped, dark wood paneling.

From the furnishings, the room would best be described as homey. Lived-in, I suppose you would say.

There was a couch, striped in random widths and mismatched colors, positioned in front of a decently sized television, with a worn coffee table between them. The T.V. was off.

Besides the couch, there was a standing artisan’s desk that an architect or some such might use sitting next to a lightly stained wooden bookshelf. A comfortable-looking recliner decorated with black and white geometric patterns was positioned directly in front of the shelf in something of a reading nook.

I was immediately struck with an uncanny sense of déjà vu. I had been in this room before. I just knew it. But I could not see how. The last thing I could remember, Jax and I had been… having a bit of fun next to the Stele.

Did I somehow get teleported back home? While having sex?! The thought was as ludicrous as it was comical, but I could not think of any alternatives. And it was… a little terrifying, if I’m honest.

On the one hand, being back on Earth would be something of a relief. No more worries over Dungeons or huge Mouths destroying whole towns. No more concerns about fucking dying every other day.

But what about my lilim? Could magical creatures that survived through the power of empathy even survive there? I had to assume not. And I could not bear the thought of losing them. It was a non-option.

After a moment, I realized there was a woman patiently watching me from the recliner. She was… stunningly beautiful. So much so that it was difficult for me to understand how I could have possibly missed her. She had lightly curled brunette hair that draped across her shoulders in waves, and she was dressed in a white, sparkling ball gown of all things. Meanwhile, her skin was so pale that it might as well have been the same shade as her dress.

For several seconds, we simply stared at one another, but then she raised a dainty little teacup to her lips and took a delicate sip in a way that spoke to a cultured upbringing. She never broke eye-contact though.

After a moment, she lifted one of her perfect eyebrows in apparent question.

“Um… hello?” I ventured.

She twitched just a bit.

“A most unusual greeting,” she observed after a moment. Her voice seemed to reverberate ever so slightly, as if the acoustics of our surroundings did not match their appearance. “Unique, to our recollection, amongst kind.”

I blinked a few times at the strangeness of her reply. “What?”

She twitched again.

Slowly, she brought the teacup to her lips once more. She seemed to consider the flavor for a few moments, simply looking into the glass as though deep in thought.

“You have an erection,” she informed me bluntly.

Instantly mortified, I glanced down to discover that my kilt was noticeably tented upward, but at least the cloth was covering me. Still, any hope of a well-received first impression had been thoroughly quashed.

“What in the—”

I paused just in time to bite back the automatic swear. It was more than warranted, but given her manner thus far, I assumed she would react poorly to that sort of thing. There was no reason to dig myself even further into the gutter. And besides, Jax’s constant recriminations on the subject were starting chip away at the habit.

Instead, I hastily brought my hands down to cover myself and cleared my throat. “Um… Sorry. I mean… I—I beg your pardon. I was uh… never mind. Not important. But uhm… wha-where am I? And who are you? What is—“

“Stop!” she interrupted, holding her hand up. Her voice was both sharp and commanding, and it seemed to ring for a half a second too long. In the ensuing silence, I could see her jaw working as though she were working through some pent-up emotion. However, after a few moments, she took a calming breath. “Before we begin, I believe you still owe us an apology.”

“What?” I said, more than confused.

She twitched yet again, and her eyes flashed with renewed anger.

Suddenly, I realized what she must have been referring to, and I cleared my throat in embarrassment. “Oh, uh… sorry about that. I was… in the middle of… well, anyway, sometimes it takes me a couple of minutes before it’ll… uhm… Look, I—I wasn’t expecting to just show up… wherever this is.” My stammered explanation eventually ran out of steam, and I trailed off.

She sighed before leaning forward to place the teacup into a little matching saucer on the coffee table, and I quickly averted my eyes. Her dress was cut low enough to show… ample things… which I was in no condition to look at currently.

Plus, it would have been impolite. To my embarrassment, that realization came half a second too late to be of any use.

“You have already apologized for that,” she said before standing. “Though, we cannot see how you could have arrived here in such a state unaware. Our instructions were quite clear.”

There were several seconds of silence then. My brain was having quite a lot of trouble parsing that last bit. Eventually, I decided to keep it simple.

“What?”

She flinched as though I had slapped her. “Stop that!”

I glanced from side to side in complete bewilderment as though looking for help. Of course, there was no one else in the room. “Stop… what?” I asked.

She took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling before groaning loudly. When she finally looked back at me, she very deliberately enunciated, “We have asked you for an apology, and we mean to have it before anything else.”

“Um…” I began, not knowing what else to say. However, I felt that it was in my best interest to just go with it. “I’m… sorry?”

“You dare!” she shouted in sudden incomprehensible rage. With one hand she grabbed the side of the coffee table and hurled it like a dart into the wall. The sudden violence was so surprising that I stumbled backward and nearly fell over an inconveniently placed end table. “I should gut you like a fish, you inconsequential little maggot! To think that I ever bothered—“

Suddenly, her tirade was cut short.

Two identical copies of her—from the cut of her hair to the clothes she was wearing—seemed to phase through the walls and rushed to grab her. “No! I will tolerate these insults no longer! I will—“

The two clones tackled her, but before they could fall to the ground, there was a flash of blinding light. Flinching, I averted my eyes. Once the light had slowly died away and I could see again, I found that the other two had seemingly vanished. There was only the one of her again.

Yet she was… different. I could not put a finger on exactly how, though. It was like she had suddenly become more whole. And her beauty… in some intangible way, she had become… resplendent. However, I could not point to a single feature that had changed. In some strange paradox, she had found a way to simultaneously look exactly the same while being completely distinct.

For a few moments, she simply busied herself with smoothing her dress as though settling her nerves. However, once she was satisfied, she looked around until she found her shattered teacup. Heaving a long and mournful sigh, she muttered a short spell under her breath, and the entire room righted itself as though nothing at all had happened.

With a critical nod, she settled back into her chair, reached for her renewed cup, and took another delicate sip. Apparently, whatever tea had been spilled had also been replaced. Then, she she shot me a difficult-to-interpret look. The best I could describe it as would be somewhere in the vicinity of ‘our conversation was just interrupted by an unruly pack of hounds running through the living room, and I am both inconvenienced and embarrassed.’

However, what she said was:

“We seem to have acted rashly. After all, you cannot be faulted for your ignorance. To explain… we are Bline, though mortals often refer to us as the Lady of Power. We have summoned you, the mortal known to us as ‘Donum of the Donum,’ here through Quest. However, we have grievances that must be accounted for before we may proceed.”

For several seconds, we simply stared at one another. I was not entirely sure what to make of that information. However, the longer I considered it, the more doubtful I became. To be sure, under normal circumstances I probably would have believed her—no questions asked—after a display of power like that. However, I had already met one goddess. While this woman was undoubtedly both dangerous and crazy as shit, she lacked that certain… je ne sais quoi de la terreur existentielle that Ahnbe naturally exuded through her every pore.

And the fact that I was looking right at her without dissolving into a gibbering mass of my own feces was a pretty big clue.

“Yeah…” I said quietly. “I think I’m going to have to call bullshit on that one.”